The following article appeared in PARADE of October 28, 2007.
With new research, scientists are learning the importance of Waking Up To Our Dreams
By Robert Moss
HERE'S AN OPEN SECRET: Dreaming isn't really about sleeping; it's about waking up. Dreams wake us up to the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. They can tell us what we need to know and alert us to actions we need to take.
Throughout history—from ancient shamans to the Bible to Freud—men and women have been fascinated by dreams and have pondered their meaning. Current research indicates that dreaming has a real, practical function but also that it can spark our imaginations in unexpected ways. Best of all, one doesn't have to be especially "adept" at dreaming: The power of dreams is accessible to everyone.
New studies confirm that all of us have dreams—even those who never recall them—every night for 90 minutes to three hours, in four or five cycles. MRI images and PET scans show that specific areas of the brain are triggered at regular intervals, giving us dream imagery.
Until recently, many scientists dismissed the idea that there was rich meaning in dreams, believing instead that dreams were initiated by random firings of the brainstem during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep.
But evidence has been accumulating that dreams also can originate during other phases of sleep, when the higher visual and emotional centers of the brain are activated. This suggests that our dreams are not strange results of meaningless biological processes. Rather, they are produced by the part of the brain tied to motivation, goals and desires.
Dreams may even be related to survival itself. Antti Revonsuo, a psychology professor in Finland, theorizes that dreaming is central to human evolution. "A dream's biological function is to simulate threatening events and to rehearse threat perception and threat avoidance," he explains. That is, our dreams can warn us of challenges ahead and give us a chance to rehearse efficient responses—including getting out of the way.
I once dreamed of a car accident on a hill east of Troy, N.Y. Several weeks later, driving on the same hill, I found my view of a curve in the road obscured by a delivery truck ahead. I remembered my dream and slowed almost to a stop—avoiding a head-on collision with an 18-wheeler.
DREAMS ALSO CAN ALERT us to dangers that are internal. They may tell us what is going on inside our bodies and what we need to do to stay healthy. Mary Agnes Twomey, a registered nurse in Baltimore, dreamed she'd traveled inside her body and found it was like a boiler room in danger of blowing up. Upon waking, she made a doctor's appointment and learned she had an ulcer that needed treatment. Other people have reported dreams that alerted them to illnesses ranging from breast cancer to heart disease.
Whether or not you believe that dreams serve as warnings, studies suggest that they play a critical role in learning and memory.
"Dreams allow us to play and experiment with new conditions or find novel solutions," says Richard C. Wilkerson, operations director of the International Association for the Study of Dreams. "They allow us to explore unusual areas of life and practice new behaviors."
One fertile source of creativity is the ability to make new and unexpected connections — something we do all the time when we dream. In dreams, "connections are made more easily than in waking, more broadly and loosely," says Dr. Ernest Hartmann, a professor of psychiatry at Tufts University who has written widely on sleep and dreaming. But he adds, "The connections are not random. They are guided by the emotional concerns of the dreamer." In dreams you may gain new insights about personal relationships or develop exciting new ideas.
Many artists have experienced this phenomenon: Paul McCartney awoke with the music for the Beatles' hit "Yesterday" in his mind. Architect Frank Gehry has said that his building designs were influenced by his dreams.
"The waking mind is thinking inside the box; the dreaming mind is thinking outside the
box," explains David Kahn, a professor at Harvard Medical School.
This may be why solutions to nagging problems often come to us in dreams. Robyn Johnson, a consultant for nonprofit organizations in Washington state, needed to produce a fund-raiser for a city park. She dreamed that Annie Oakley rode into the park on her horse, urging her to produce a children's storybook to be given to every guest. She followed Oakley's advice, to great success.
Not least, dreams can help us deal with emotional hurdles. Marlene Cantor at the May Institute in Massachusetts has discovered recurring themes in the dreams of middle-aged women. One woman dreamed night after night of going to a house that was falling into disrepair. It began to crumble around her, and one night she saw the roof falling in. In another dream, she saw a beautiful young girl run out of the house and into the path of a speeding car. She wept as the girl died in her arms. In sharing these dreams, the woman reflected that the first symbolic dreamscape might express her fears about her aging body. And perhaps in weeping over the young girl's death, she was mourning the death of her younger self.
"Most of these women had never really talked to anyone—not family, not even therapists—about what they were feeling," Cantor recalls. "Telling their dreams brought them a tremendous sense of relief, of coming out of silence and solitude."
Whether we share our dreams or reflect on them privately, we'd all do well to wake up to their power. Amid the stress and clutter of everyday life, our dreams can help us discover what's most important.
Robert Moss is the author of "The Three 'Only' Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence & Imagination."
*********************
PERSONAL COMMENTS
In my own dealings with dissociated Essences (Inner Self Helpers of MPD patients), they have described to me that they, the ISH, goes during non-dream sleep time into Thoughtspace to confer with their supervisors, the CIE. Then they return to the mind of their charge to give instructions in dreams which the person has just before awakening.
Over time, I developed the completely unscientific idea that there are three types of dreams we may have every night. The first dream is left over garbage from the day’s activities, whatever we have been thinking and worrying about. The first dreams after going to sleep are to let us discharge the feelings about those events and “clean out our minds” of them, so we can leave them behind.
The second set of dreams happen next, and they are about the older conflicts we may have, the stuff that the Freudian and Jungian analysts love to hear about during psychoanalysis. These can them bubble up to the surface and allow the person to bring them to consciousness and work on their resolution.
The third set of dreams are created by the Essence/ISH and they are the instructions for the day ahead. Here is where the answer to some intellectual puzzle will come into consciousness, or a new relationship which was not seen before. Here is where we feel we need to do some specific action after we get up and we are not happy until we get it done and out of the way.
When I came out of psychiatric training, both Freudian and Jungian therapist put a great deal of importance in the nature of the dreams of their patients. I was never one who could remember my dreams, so I have not been one to study my own. But they did seem important to many in the field of psychiatry.
So I was unhappy when I saw reports that modern students of sleep, those running university sleep labs, had concluded that dreams had no psychological importance, that they were just random firings of the brain. This they determined by waking up sleeping subjects in their labs when they showed signs of dreaming. Now that seemed like the scientific method, go in and break apart the system to see how it really works. But maybe they only saw a few pieces, and not the whole system as it was designed to operate. So I was pleased to see someone coming up with a resurgence in psychological importance of dreams. At least that agrees with what the ISHs have told me time and again.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Saturday, September 8, 2007
"Life After Death" in AARP The Magazine
In the Sept/Oct 2007 edition of AARP The Magazine, Bill Newcott writes an article, "Life After Death," resulting from a poll of 1011 people over 50, regarding their beliefs on life after death. Here are some quotes from that article:
"[P]eople 50 and over tend to be downright conventional in their basic beliefs; nearly three quarters (73 percent) agree with the statement 'I believe in life after death.' Women are a lot more likely to believe in an afterlife (80 percent) than men (64 percent)."
"Believers show general agreement over the choice of destinations in the afterlife, as well: 86 percent say there's a Heaven, while somewhat fewer (70 percent) believe in Hell."
"Just 40 percent believe Heaven is 'a place,' while 47 percent say it's a 'state of being.' As for the alternate destination, of those who think Hell exists, 43 percent say it's a 'state of being': 42 percent say it's 'a place'."
"Among those with a household income of $75,000 or more per year, 78 percent believe in Heaven -- compared with 90 percentage of those earning $25,000 or less. Similarly, 77 percent of college-educated people think there's a Heaven, compared with 89 percent of those who have a high school diploma or less."
"The largest group, 29 percent of those who believe in Heaven, responded that the prerequisite is to 'believe in Jesus Christ.' Twenty-five percent said people who 'are good' get in. Another 10 percent said that people who 'believe in one God' are welcomed into Heaven. Likewise, 10 percent took a come-one, come-all philosophy, saying everyone gets into Heaven. And while 88 percent of people believe they'll be in Heaven after they die, they're not so sure about the rest of us. Those responding said 64 percent of all people get into Heaven."
"Forty percent of those who believe in Hell said 'people who are bad' or 'people who have sinned' go there; 17 percent said, 'People who do not believe in Jesus Christ' are condemned to spend their afterlife in Hell."
"Twenty-three percent of those responding said they believe in reincarnation."
"More than half of those responding reported a belief in spirits or ghosts -- with more women (60 percent) than men (44 percent) agreeing. Boomers are a lot more likely to believe in ghosts (64 percent) when compared with those in their 60s (51 percent) or 70s or older (38 percent). . . . Thirty-eight percent of all those responding to our poll say they have felt a presence, seen something, that they thought might have been a spirit or a ghost."
"Nearly one quarter of those responding agreed with the statement 'I believe that when I die, that's the end.'"
Now here is how my spiritual teacher, Charity (a spirit), would answer those questions:
1. There is life (i. e. consciousness of the Essence) after physical death.
2. There is what you humans can call Heaven in which we live. It is an interconnected universe to the one you live in. You may call it Thoughtspace if you choose. It has no time or distance, and no physical objects. All communication is by thought. There is no Hell, but we do have two centers for rehabilitation of turned Essences. In one, they may be retrained to be able to be reincarnated when rehabilitated. In the other one, they will be re-educated but will never be allowed to reincarnate.
3. All Essences and Personalities will be housed in our universe (Thoughtspace) when they cease to exist in Physicalspace. Religions are important only to the Personalities, who are in a state of hibernation in Thoughtspace, and it makes no difference what religion they may have practiced. Those with Essences who are willing to continue helping their charges follow and fulfill their life plans will be in a state of training with the CIE, such as Faith and Hope, during their time in Thoughtspace. Religion is of no importance to the Essences. It matters not to Essences what their charges (Personalities) thought about Jesus Christ or any other religious leader.
4. Reincarnation is a fact. Each human will have between 500 and 5,000 lifetimes, in one or another of the existing 11 parallel universes which exist.
5. Spirits exist, as we, the CIE (Faith, Hope & Charity), are spirits who have never had our own physical bodies. However, we can temporarily take over the body of a person, especially one who is highly hypnotizable. But it is also possible for a person who is unexpectedly dying to create a "thoughtform" from psychic energy, which can then exist after the body has deteriorated. That thoughtform is often seen as a ghost who only talks about the events surrounding the sudden death of that person. Also, Essences and we, the CIE, can create what appear to be ghosts or apparitions to someone we wish to influence and teach in that way.
6. When you, Ralph, die (we prefer to use the term "cease to exist"), both your Personality and Essence will go into Thoughtspace. Your Personality will be in hibernation, but your Essence will be in training for your next lifetime. When the proper infant you are to be is born, your Essence+Personality combination will be implanted into the infant when it takes its first breath after delivery. Only when a brain, with its neurohormones, is available, can the Personality start functioning again. The Essence can function without a brain, body or hormones.
"[P]eople 50 and over tend to be downright conventional in their basic beliefs; nearly three quarters (73 percent) agree with the statement 'I believe in life after death.' Women are a lot more likely to believe in an afterlife (80 percent) than men (64 percent)."
"Believers show general agreement over the choice of destinations in the afterlife, as well: 86 percent say there's a Heaven, while somewhat fewer (70 percent) believe in Hell."
"Just 40 percent believe Heaven is 'a place,' while 47 percent say it's a 'state of being.' As for the alternate destination, of those who think Hell exists, 43 percent say it's a 'state of being': 42 percent say it's 'a place'."
"Among those with a household income of $75,000 or more per year, 78 percent believe in Heaven -- compared with 90 percentage of those earning $25,000 or less. Similarly, 77 percent of college-educated people think there's a Heaven, compared with 89 percent of those who have a high school diploma or less."
"The largest group, 29 percent of those who believe in Heaven, responded that the prerequisite is to 'believe in Jesus Christ.' Twenty-five percent said people who 'are good' get in. Another 10 percent said that people who 'believe in one God' are welcomed into Heaven. Likewise, 10 percent took a come-one, come-all philosophy, saying everyone gets into Heaven. And while 88 percent of people believe they'll be in Heaven after they die, they're not so sure about the rest of us. Those responding said 64 percent of all people get into Heaven."
"Forty percent of those who believe in Hell said 'people who are bad' or 'people who have sinned' go there; 17 percent said, 'People who do not believe in Jesus Christ' are condemned to spend their afterlife in Hell."
"Twenty-three percent of those responding said they believe in reincarnation."
"More than half of those responding reported a belief in spirits or ghosts -- with more women (60 percent) than men (44 percent) agreeing. Boomers are a lot more likely to believe in ghosts (64 percent) when compared with those in their 60s (51 percent) or 70s or older (38 percent). . . . Thirty-eight percent of all those responding to our poll say they have felt a presence, seen something, that they thought might have been a spirit or a ghost."
"Nearly one quarter of those responding agreed with the statement 'I believe that when I die, that's the end.'"
Now here is how my spiritual teacher, Charity (a spirit), would answer those questions:
1. There is life (i. e. consciousness of the Essence) after physical death.
2. There is what you humans can call Heaven in which we live. It is an interconnected universe to the one you live in. You may call it Thoughtspace if you choose. It has no time or distance, and no physical objects. All communication is by thought. There is no Hell, but we do have two centers for rehabilitation of turned Essences. In one, they may be retrained to be able to be reincarnated when rehabilitated. In the other one, they will be re-educated but will never be allowed to reincarnate.
3. All Essences and Personalities will be housed in our universe (Thoughtspace) when they cease to exist in Physicalspace. Religions are important only to the Personalities, who are in a state of hibernation in Thoughtspace, and it makes no difference what religion they may have practiced. Those with Essences who are willing to continue helping their charges follow and fulfill their life plans will be in a state of training with the CIE, such as Faith and Hope, during their time in Thoughtspace. Religion is of no importance to the Essences. It matters not to Essences what their charges (Personalities) thought about Jesus Christ or any other religious leader.
4. Reincarnation is a fact. Each human will have between 500 and 5,000 lifetimes, in one or another of the existing 11 parallel universes which exist.
5. Spirits exist, as we, the CIE (Faith, Hope & Charity), are spirits who have never had our own physical bodies. However, we can temporarily take over the body of a person, especially one who is highly hypnotizable. But it is also possible for a person who is unexpectedly dying to create a "thoughtform" from psychic energy, which can then exist after the body has deteriorated. That thoughtform is often seen as a ghost who only talks about the events surrounding the sudden death of that person. Also, Essences and we, the CIE, can create what appear to be ghosts or apparitions to someone we wish to influence and teach in that way.
6. When you, Ralph, die (we prefer to use the term "cease to exist"), both your Personality and Essence will go into Thoughtspace. Your Personality will be in hibernation, but your Essence will be in training for your next lifetime. When the proper infant you are to be is born, your Essence+Personality combination will be implanted into the infant when it takes its first breath after delivery. Only when a brain, with its neurohormones, is available, can the Personality start functioning again. The Essence can function without a brain, body or hormones.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
"Back From the Dead" in Newsweek
The cover story for the latest NEWSWEEK magazine, 7-23-07, is called "Back From the Dead." The subtitle is "Doctors are reinventing how they treat sudden cardiac arrest, which is fatal 95 percent of the time. A report from the border between life and death." Another subtitle is "Oxygen deprivation is merely the start of a cascade. Dying turns out to be almost as complicated as living."
Originally, I had considered copying certain paragraphs and commenting on them, but that appeared too tedious for me. I encourage all of you to read this article, as it does present up-to-date ideas and procedures which should become commonplace in the emergency treatment of people with disorders which can cause sudden death.
What I want to comment on are the more philosophical issues that underly the use of any of these techniques and procedures. We, in our culture, have been taught that being alive is the highest value of all, one that supercedes all others. I spent four months of my 12 month internship in emergency rooms, where we were expected to keep alive all who entered there. Fortunately for us interns, there were no magic machines which could bring back to life those who had been severely injured or who suffered major strokes or heart attacks. But this article now shows where we have come to, and doctors are expected to use these machines to resuscitate those who have gone into comas and have no vital signs.
Also, in this article, they wonder where the mind goes when the brain is not functioning. There are philosophers, called "physicalists," who believe that all thinking is caused by brain cells, so if brain cells are dead, there can be no thinking by any "thing" called consciousness. Near Death Experiences (NDE) are mentioned as occurring in terminally injured patients who then revived to tell about how they thought while their brains were without oxygen.
First, the idea of a "time to die" has been repeatedly mentioned to me by the CIE, my spiritual teachers. They say that each of us has a Life Plan, provided by The Creator, and it includes the conditions for ending this phase of our Master Life Plan. The rest of the Plan will be in future incarnations. So the CIE do not see physical death as something as terrible as our culture does; it is "coming home," at the very least. They are there, in Thoughtspace, to welcome the Essence and Personality of each of us, when our time comes, and they are full of agape love, nothing else. They do not judge us, they do not condemn us, they do not find us failing in any way. What a difference from our society here in Physicalspace!
So when the medical staff decides to use extraordinary means to keep a body alive, is that always wise? Nothing in this world is "always," so the answer has to be "no." There are some times when the doctor's Essence will contact the patient's Essence and get the message that it is OK, even mandatory, for this patient to die at this time, in this place. Every doctor who has worked with dying patients in the ER knows when this has happened. The doctor may feel stressed by not being able to revive this man or woman, but inside he or she knows there is no point in being heroic and expensive about it. The proper time to "cease to exist" (as the CIE call dying) has come for this man or woman. Only a doctor with an ego problem will get distressed about what appears inevitable to others, a doctor who feels like a failure if his patient dies. Such doctors exist, and they are the bane of existence for hospice nurses taking care of their patients.
Another question posed is - where is the mind of the patient during the coma? Here I refer to my work with dissociated patients, whose Essences have separated from their Personalities. The Essence has no emotions at all and claims to be able to exist and communicate by thought when out of the body, visiting its "supervisory CIE" in Thoughtspace, which it does every night during sleep. It can also be aware of the surroundings of the person when the sensory organs, such as eyes and ears, are not working properly. This ensures the safety and survival of that person.
The Personality is another matter, however. Since it operates with emotions, it must be able to use the neurohormones and sex hormones of the human body. So it cannot function if the physical organism is not functioning properly. When the body "ceases to exist", I envision the Personality as going into a state of hibernation until it is implanted into a new body which is born of a new mother in the next incarnation. Then it can function again, with all the emotions possible to be expressed. But it is a "bundle of Intelligent Energy", so it does exist in a latent form between physical lives, in my opinion. It just cannot usually express itself during its time out of the body.
As with everything I say on this subject, there are exceptions to this rule. In the case of Marie, my former MPD patient, her Original Personality dissociated from her Essence at the age of six months, when her mother tried to kill her in her crib. Her Essence, Becky, then sent Marie's Original Personality off to Thoughtspace to be "raised" by the CIE, Faith, Hope & Charity. Marie remembers those 30 years quite well. She reports that she never, during that time, experienced any emotions, as so she was always calm and peaceful, being filled with the agape love of her "mothers." Only when she returned to her physical body, following my therapy, did she have the capacity to feel fear, jealousy, anger, lust, etc. It took having a body to allow her to experience those very human feelings. They do not exist in the absence of the body, it seems.
Nothing I say here should be understood to stand in the way of trying to resuscitate anyone who comes to the attention of trained medical staff. We outsiders do not know which one of them is meant to be saved and which one of them is meant to "cease to exist." Only the patient's Essence knows that fact. But if we humans then interfere in what is planned by The Creator for their future fate, another chain of events is brought into play, with some results we would rather not see. Each Essence has been trained to deal with expected events. But if a person meant to die is kept alive on life support machines, the Essence simply has no idea of what it is supposed to do. During coma periods, it will go to Thoughtspace to consult with its CIE, and then will do its best to be of help to its "charge." But it can become quite dissatisfied with the status quo and develop a negative attitude. In its next lifetime, it can more easily become a "turned Essence" and create a sociopathic individual, a habitual criminal. We certainly do not need more of those in coming generations.
Originally, I had considered copying certain paragraphs and commenting on them, but that appeared too tedious for me. I encourage all of you to read this article, as it does present up-to-date ideas and procedures which should become commonplace in the emergency treatment of people with disorders which can cause sudden death.
What I want to comment on are the more philosophical issues that underly the use of any of these techniques and procedures. We, in our culture, have been taught that being alive is the highest value of all, one that supercedes all others. I spent four months of my 12 month internship in emergency rooms, where we were expected to keep alive all who entered there. Fortunately for us interns, there were no magic machines which could bring back to life those who had been severely injured or who suffered major strokes or heart attacks. But this article now shows where we have come to, and doctors are expected to use these machines to resuscitate those who have gone into comas and have no vital signs.
Also, in this article, they wonder where the mind goes when the brain is not functioning. There are philosophers, called "physicalists," who believe that all thinking is caused by brain cells, so if brain cells are dead, there can be no thinking by any "thing" called consciousness. Near Death Experiences (NDE) are mentioned as occurring in terminally injured patients who then revived to tell about how they thought while their brains were without oxygen.
First, the idea of a "time to die" has been repeatedly mentioned to me by the CIE, my spiritual teachers. They say that each of us has a Life Plan, provided by The Creator, and it includes the conditions for ending this phase of our Master Life Plan. The rest of the Plan will be in future incarnations. So the CIE do not see physical death as something as terrible as our culture does; it is "coming home," at the very least. They are there, in Thoughtspace, to welcome the Essence and Personality of each of us, when our time comes, and they are full of agape love, nothing else. They do not judge us, they do not condemn us, they do not find us failing in any way. What a difference from our society here in Physicalspace!
So when the medical staff decides to use extraordinary means to keep a body alive, is that always wise? Nothing in this world is "always," so the answer has to be "no." There are some times when the doctor's Essence will contact the patient's Essence and get the message that it is OK, even mandatory, for this patient to die at this time, in this place. Every doctor who has worked with dying patients in the ER knows when this has happened. The doctor may feel stressed by not being able to revive this man or woman, but inside he or she knows there is no point in being heroic and expensive about it. The proper time to "cease to exist" (as the CIE call dying) has come for this man or woman. Only a doctor with an ego problem will get distressed about what appears inevitable to others, a doctor who feels like a failure if his patient dies. Such doctors exist, and they are the bane of existence for hospice nurses taking care of their patients.
Another question posed is - where is the mind of the patient during the coma? Here I refer to my work with dissociated patients, whose Essences have separated from their Personalities. The Essence has no emotions at all and claims to be able to exist and communicate by thought when out of the body, visiting its "supervisory CIE" in Thoughtspace, which it does every night during sleep. It can also be aware of the surroundings of the person when the sensory organs, such as eyes and ears, are not working properly. This ensures the safety and survival of that person.
The Personality is another matter, however. Since it operates with emotions, it must be able to use the neurohormones and sex hormones of the human body. So it cannot function if the physical organism is not functioning properly. When the body "ceases to exist", I envision the Personality as going into a state of hibernation until it is implanted into a new body which is born of a new mother in the next incarnation. Then it can function again, with all the emotions possible to be expressed. But it is a "bundle of Intelligent Energy", so it does exist in a latent form between physical lives, in my opinion. It just cannot usually express itself during its time out of the body.
As with everything I say on this subject, there are exceptions to this rule. In the case of Marie, my former MPD patient, her Original Personality dissociated from her Essence at the age of six months, when her mother tried to kill her in her crib. Her Essence, Becky, then sent Marie's Original Personality off to Thoughtspace to be "raised" by the CIE, Faith, Hope & Charity. Marie remembers those 30 years quite well. She reports that she never, during that time, experienced any emotions, as so she was always calm and peaceful, being filled with the agape love of her "mothers." Only when she returned to her physical body, following my therapy, did she have the capacity to feel fear, jealousy, anger, lust, etc. It took having a body to allow her to experience those very human feelings. They do not exist in the absence of the body, it seems.
Nothing I say here should be understood to stand in the way of trying to resuscitate anyone who comes to the attention of trained medical staff. We outsiders do not know which one of them is meant to be saved and which one of them is meant to "cease to exist." Only the patient's Essence knows that fact. But if we humans then interfere in what is planned by The Creator for their future fate, another chain of events is brought into play, with some results we would rather not see. Each Essence has been trained to deal with expected events. But if a person meant to die is kept alive on life support machines, the Essence simply has no idea of what it is supposed to do. During coma periods, it will go to Thoughtspace to consult with its CIE, and then will do its best to be of help to its "charge." But it can become quite dissatisfied with the status quo and develop a negative attitude. In its next lifetime, it can more easily become a "turned Essence" and create a sociopathic individual, a habitual criminal. We certainly do not need more of those in coming generations.
Monday, July 9, 2007
Jekyll & Hyde on stage
This past Sunday afternoon, I attended the live stage performance of "Jeykll & Hyde" at the Clark Center for the Performing Arts in Arroyo Grande, CA, produced by Chameleon Productions, an apt title for this performance. The story, by Robert Louis Stevenson, is a classic story of the duality of good and evil in human beings. While it is fiction, I have learned that scriptwriters and other artists have often understood human nature better than we psychiatrists and other mental health professionals. This story is NOT about a case of MPD or DID, but is one which is based on the possibility of an evil psychic entity being created by the ingestion of a powerful chemical. Personally, I don't know if there is any chemical which can do what is shown in this play all by itself, but the idea is a powerful one to make us think seriously about the subject.
Since I had not read this story before, or seen the play or movie, I watched the drama unfold, with powerful stage settings and magnificent vocal renditions. The lead character is a medical doctor named Dr. Henry Jekell, who is doing research in a conservative hospital. The program states, "Convinced the cure for his father's mental illness lies in the separation of man's evil nature from his good, Dr. Henry Jekyll unwittingly unleashes his own dark side, wreaking havoc in the streets of late 19th century London as the savage, maniacal Edward Hyde."
Dr. Jeckell goes before the Board of Governors of St. Jude's Hospital to plead for permission to use a human subject in his experiment. He has concocted a chemical which he thinks will separate the evil self from the good self in a human, and thus he might remove the evil from the good, benefiting all mankind. The Board turns him down and he then decides to secretly use himself as the human subject. [For those who are interested in the methods of pharmacological research, this is a major error in procedure. To do a safe experiment, one must have three persons involved in the experiment (or in the religious ritual, or in medical treatment). One is the person to take the drug, one who can be able to report on the effects accurately. The next person must be the pharmacist or chemist who guarantees a pure drug is being used. The last one is the doctor or experimenter (or religious leader) who decides how much drug to give and is responsible for the safety of the the human subject. In this story, all roles were played by only one man, so failure of the experiment was guaranteed.]
At the same time, Dr. Jekyll is engaged to be married to a lovely woman, the daughter of his best sponsor and mentor. He also goes out on the town with his best friend, who is an observer of the events to unfold, and they visit a local watering hole frequented by prostitutes. One of them, Lucy, is most attractive to Dr. Jekyll, as she is the prototypical "prostitute with a soft heart." He gives her his business card in case she ever needs medical help.
When he takes the dangerous potion, he loses control of his body and it is taken over by a monstrous Henry Hyde, who loves to kill people. He starts with those on the Board of Governors which turned down Dr. Jekyll's request, and then starts killing off one actor after another.
Hyde meets often with Lucy, who fancies herself as one gal who can take care of herself. But Hyde assaults her and she then goes to see Dr. Jekyll for treatment of her bruises. Dr. Jekyll does not have any memory of having been in her bedroom as Edward Hyde, of course. After he treats her wounds, he kisses her before she leaves his laboratory. Lucy then sings a powerful song of how she must be worth something because she has a doctor in love with her.
However, at the next visit to her bed by Hyde, he slits Lucy's throat and kills her. Then he has gone way over the edge in just being evil to those who were critical of Dr. Jekyll, and Dr. Jekyll thinks he can control this powerful "killing machine" inside him. He then marries his fiancee, and on his wedding day, he loses control and Hyde takes over in front of all his friends. Hyde then tries to kill his bride, Emma, and a great tussle ensues. Dr. Jekyll's best friend, John, finally shoots Hyde with a pistol Dr. Jekyll had handy for suicide, and he dies in the arms of his bride. The curtain finally comes down for the last time.
If anyone is wondering whether or not this is a fictional case of MPD or DID, let me assure them that IT IS NOT. It is more like the case of Ken Bianchi, one of the LA Hillside Stranglers, whom I saw for his own murder trial. Ken was a nice enough guy to have around, but his "Steve Walker" was a killer of prostitutes and those other women he chose to rape and kill. We had quite a intellectual battle as to whether or not he was a "multiple" and my final conclusion was that he was not one. He had not created any real alter-personalities (which are designed for self protection and survival), but he had used his emotional imagination to create Internalized Imaginary Companions or IIC. One of these was created in response to his mother's very odd and irritating behavior toward him, and so wanted to kill woman, after raping them.
In this drama, we have no indication of such a bad mental attitude towards women by Dr. Jekyll, so we have no psychological basis for his creating this monster with his own imagination. I can't think of a way any chemical can make de nova a mental entity with desires, goal making abilities, and social attributes of any kind. However, I did see one man for court evaluation who exhibited several different IIC, which he mentally created in childhood because of sexual abuse by his mother and sister. Two of his IIC were woman and two of them were men. But they only came out when he was intoxicated with liquor. When he was in jail and sober, then never showed up. So, if Dr. Jekyll had made an IIC in his boyhood, the chemical he brewed could be an intoxicant which allowed them to show themselves in adulthood. This is what happens with such dissociating drugs as alcohol and sleeping pills.
There is also the question of whether or not there is inherent evil in every human being, as is implied in this story. Obviously Carl Jung seemed to think so, as he taught that each of us has a "shadow side." In my multiples, I looked at all kinds of "sides" and never found a "shadow side." I did find a lot of angry alters, who were angry at specific adults in the person's past who had abused them. But is anger the same as being evil? I think not.
In my education on how the Essence works with the person's Emotional Self (or ego or personality), the Essence is nonemotional. But it can develop some very bad attitudes, by which it becomes a "turned Essence." Then it can lead the Emotional self into hating innocent people and doing harm to them. An evil entity wants to destroy someone he is angry at, not just yell and scream at them. He may want to destroy their ability to earn a living, or take away what is most valuable to them. This is a whole package of intentions, none of them good to have. It is a lot more than just being angry. Such turned Essences cannot be "unturned" by psychotherapy, which is aimed at the Emotional Self. Only after they leave this mortal coil in death can they be rehabilitated in the other universe I call Thoughtspace. So, in the terms of this story, the death of Dr. Jekyll was the only proper result, when his body had come under the control of something so evil that it succeeded in killing a woman who was kind to him, the prostitute, and then tried to kill Emma, his new wife, who loved him through all of this. There is no way he could have been rehabilitated in this physical world. In Thoughtspace, the forces for good were available, at no cost to him or the state, for as long as all eternity.
Since I had not read this story before, or seen the play or movie, I watched the drama unfold, with powerful stage settings and magnificent vocal renditions. The lead character is a medical doctor named Dr. Henry Jekell, who is doing research in a conservative hospital. The program states, "Convinced the cure for his father's mental illness lies in the separation of man's evil nature from his good, Dr. Henry Jekyll unwittingly unleashes his own dark side, wreaking havoc in the streets of late 19th century London as the savage, maniacal Edward Hyde."
Dr. Jeckell goes before the Board of Governors of St. Jude's Hospital to plead for permission to use a human subject in his experiment. He has concocted a chemical which he thinks will separate the evil self from the good self in a human, and thus he might remove the evil from the good, benefiting all mankind. The Board turns him down and he then decides to secretly use himself as the human subject. [For those who are interested in the methods of pharmacological research, this is a major error in procedure. To do a safe experiment, one must have three persons involved in the experiment (or in the religious ritual, or in medical treatment). One is the person to take the drug, one who can be able to report on the effects accurately. The next person must be the pharmacist or chemist who guarantees a pure drug is being used. The last one is the doctor or experimenter (or religious leader) who decides how much drug to give and is responsible for the safety of the the human subject. In this story, all roles were played by only one man, so failure of the experiment was guaranteed.]
At the same time, Dr. Jekyll is engaged to be married to a lovely woman, the daughter of his best sponsor and mentor. He also goes out on the town with his best friend, who is an observer of the events to unfold, and they visit a local watering hole frequented by prostitutes. One of them, Lucy, is most attractive to Dr. Jekyll, as she is the prototypical "prostitute with a soft heart." He gives her his business card in case she ever needs medical help.
When he takes the dangerous potion, he loses control of his body and it is taken over by a monstrous Henry Hyde, who loves to kill people. He starts with those on the Board of Governors which turned down Dr. Jekyll's request, and then starts killing off one actor after another.
Hyde meets often with Lucy, who fancies herself as one gal who can take care of herself. But Hyde assaults her and she then goes to see Dr. Jekyll for treatment of her bruises. Dr. Jekyll does not have any memory of having been in her bedroom as Edward Hyde, of course. After he treats her wounds, he kisses her before she leaves his laboratory. Lucy then sings a powerful song of how she must be worth something because she has a doctor in love with her.
However, at the next visit to her bed by Hyde, he slits Lucy's throat and kills her. Then he has gone way over the edge in just being evil to those who were critical of Dr. Jekyll, and Dr. Jekyll thinks he can control this powerful "killing machine" inside him. He then marries his fiancee, and on his wedding day, he loses control and Hyde takes over in front of all his friends. Hyde then tries to kill his bride, Emma, and a great tussle ensues. Dr. Jekyll's best friend, John, finally shoots Hyde with a pistol Dr. Jekyll had handy for suicide, and he dies in the arms of his bride. The curtain finally comes down for the last time.
If anyone is wondering whether or not this is a fictional case of MPD or DID, let me assure them that IT IS NOT. It is more like the case of Ken Bianchi, one of the LA Hillside Stranglers, whom I saw for his own murder trial. Ken was a nice enough guy to have around, but his "Steve Walker" was a killer of prostitutes and those other women he chose to rape and kill. We had quite a intellectual battle as to whether or not he was a "multiple" and my final conclusion was that he was not one. He had not created any real alter-personalities (which are designed for self protection and survival), but he had used his emotional imagination to create Internalized Imaginary Companions or IIC. One of these was created in response to his mother's very odd and irritating behavior toward him, and so wanted to kill woman, after raping them.
In this drama, we have no indication of such a bad mental attitude towards women by Dr. Jekyll, so we have no psychological basis for his creating this monster with his own imagination. I can't think of a way any chemical can make de nova a mental entity with desires, goal making abilities, and social attributes of any kind. However, I did see one man for court evaluation who exhibited several different IIC, which he mentally created in childhood because of sexual abuse by his mother and sister. Two of his IIC were woman and two of them were men. But they only came out when he was intoxicated with liquor. When he was in jail and sober, then never showed up. So, if Dr. Jekyll had made an IIC in his boyhood, the chemical he brewed could be an intoxicant which allowed them to show themselves in adulthood. This is what happens with such dissociating drugs as alcohol and sleeping pills.
There is also the question of whether or not there is inherent evil in every human being, as is implied in this story. Obviously Carl Jung seemed to think so, as he taught that each of us has a "shadow side." In my multiples, I looked at all kinds of "sides" and never found a "shadow side." I did find a lot of angry alters, who were angry at specific adults in the person's past who had abused them. But is anger the same as being evil? I think not.
In my education on how the Essence works with the person's Emotional Self (or ego or personality), the Essence is nonemotional. But it can develop some very bad attitudes, by which it becomes a "turned Essence." Then it can lead the Emotional self into hating innocent people and doing harm to them. An evil entity wants to destroy someone he is angry at, not just yell and scream at them. He may want to destroy their ability to earn a living, or take away what is most valuable to them. This is a whole package of intentions, none of them good to have. It is a lot more than just being angry. Such turned Essences cannot be "unturned" by psychotherapy, which is aimed at the Emotional Self. Only after they leave this mortal coil in death can they be rehabilitated in the other universe I call Thoughtspace. So, in the terms of this story, the death of Dr. Jekyll was the only proper result, when his body had come under the control of something so evil that it succeeded in killing a woman who was kind to him, the prostitute, and then tried to kill Emma, his new wife, who loved him through all of this. There is no way he could have been rehabilitated in this physical world. In Thoughtspace, the forces for good were available, at no cost to him or the state, for as long as all eternity.
Friday, June 8, 2007
"Miracles" on Ophra Winfrey show
Yesterday, the Ophra Winfrey show had the subject of rescue miracles. She interviewed a number of people on stage who had been involved in life threatening incidents, yet who had come through them alive. As is usual in such experiences, each survivor was now looking at life in a quite different manner than before, taking each day as precious and no longer concerned about material gains in their live.
But there was one miracle rescue shown on film which was not accompanied by an interview with the survivor. That incident involved a woman in a car which went into a flooded river. She was alone in the car when it went underwater and a half dozen men then went out to her aid. She had all the windows closed and could not get out. Then there was a picture of one man bringing her up above water, and she was rescued from certain death.
Ophra then told us that, when they pulled the car from the river bottom, they found that ALL of the windows were still shut tight. There were no open or broken windows. That was the end of her comment!
Since the woman rescued was not there to be interviewed, we viewers have no idea what she perceived as she went from inside the car to outside the car underwater and then to the surface of the water. All we can do is guess at what might have happened.
Since I had two reports from my ex-MPD patient, Marie, of similar situations, I will offer a paranormal explanation, which has repeatedly been used on Star Trek -- dematerialization and rematerialization (Beam me up, Scotty!) Yes, I know that scientists have said that any such process with one body would use most of the energy in the physical world, but I am talking about miracles here, which means they violate "natural law." The idea is that the CIE I have met have the ability to dematerialize a person (and the car she was in in my reports), move them from Physicalspace into Thoughtspace, and then rematerialize them again at another location in Physicalspace. They disappear from where they were in our "real world" and then appear again someplace else. That is why I am curious what this woman in the car remembers happening to her. Did she suddenly find herself outside the car, without having penetrated the glass window? We were not informed of this, so we do not know. But I thought it was a most interesting story to see on national TV.
But there was one miracle rescue shown on film which was not accompanied by an interview with the survivor. That incident involved a woman in a car which went into a flooded river. She was alone in the car when it went underwater and a half dozen men then went out to her aid. She had all the windows closed and could not get out. Then there was a picture of one man bringing her up above water, and she was rescued from certain death.
Ophra then told us that, when they pulled the car from the river bottom, they found that ALL of the windows were still shut tight. There were no open or broken windows. That was the end of her comment!
Since the woman rescued was not there to be interviewed, we viewers have no idea what she perceived as she went from inside the car to outside the car underwater and then to the surface of the water. All we can do is guess at what might have happened.
Since I had two reports from my ex-MPD patient, Marie, of similar situations, I will offer a paranormal explanation, which has repeatedly been used on Star Trek -- dematerialization and rematerialization (Beam me up, Scotty!) Yes, I know that scientists have said that any such process with one body would use most of the energy in the physical world, but I am talking about miracles here, which means they violate "natural law." The idea is that the CIE I have met have the ability to dematerialize a person (and the car she was in in my reports), move them from Physicalspace into Thoughtspace, and then rematerialize them again at another location in Physicalspace. They disappear from where they were in our "real world" and then appear again someplace else. That is why I am curious what this woman in the car remembers happening to her. Did she suddenly find herself outside the car, without having penetrated the glass window? We were not informed of this, so we do not know. But I thought it was a most interesting story to see on national TV.
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
"Intuition" in Scientific American Mind
In the current (June/July 2007) edition of Scientific American Mind, there is an article called "The Powers and Perils of Intuition: Understanding the nature of our gut instincts," by David G. Myers. The author is a professor of psychology at Hope College and the author of 15 books, including one on intuition.
Since I have written often about how the human Essence is the source of our intuitive knowledge, I was most interested in reading this piece. A quick summary box says this:
"Fast Facts
"Intuition's Double Edge
"1. Cognitive science reveals a two-track human mind, featuring a deliberate, analytical "high road" and an automatic, intuitive "low road."
"2. Through life experience we gain intuitive expertise and we learn associations that surface as intuitive feelings.
"3. As studies of implicit prejudice and misplaced fears illustrate, unchecked gut feelings can lead us astray."
In the text, he quotes psychologist Daniel Kahneman's description of "Track ('System') 1 -- our behind-the-scenes, intuitive mind -- is fast, automatic, effortless, associative, implicit (not available to introspection) and often emotionally charged. Track 2 -- our familiar, conscious (explicit) mind -- is deliberate, sequential and rational, and it requires effort to employ."
Under "Intuition's Powers," he lists blindsight, the ability of persons blind because of damage to their visual cortex to be able to "know" when something enters their blind visual field. I have heard the lectures on this at consciousness conferences, where no one knew how it could be true. But I knew that the Essence of the blind individual is there to provide safety first, so the Essence could tell there was something that might be dangerous in that blind area. The person did not have an visual message as to what it was, just that something was there. This seemed to me to be a logical explanation, that the Essence can see without optic nerves and visual brain cortex, because that is what it does to protect the individual from harm.
Under "Intuition's Perils," he lists "intuitive prejudice" and "intuitive fears." These are emotional reactions which have been learned, often long ago, and trigger an avoidance response. In my thinking, this is NOT as aspect of Essence functioning, but part of the function of the Personality, a.k.a. emotional self or irrational soul. In the case of my now-grown son, when he was a little boy, sick in bed with the flu, he was fed a meal which included ripe whole tomatoes. When he put a tomato in his mouth, he vomited. Thereafter, he was convinced that he was "allergic" to tomatoes and refused to eat them. He could still eat tomato catsup on his hamburgers, however. But, to him, he was allergic to whole tomatoes. Such a reaction is easy enough to understand, as to his emotional Personality, the association between tomatoes and vomiting was a cause and effect relationship, a common mistake in logic.
So here I take issue with the author, for including "associative" and "emotionally charged" as characteristics of Track 1, Intuition. I can see his mistake, since he was not dealing with dissociative people, like I have. In integrated people, the Essence and Personality are closely bonded together, so it is often impossible to know, in laboratory tests, which "part" is doing which tasks. But when they are dissociated, as in MPD/DID, then the Essence (now an ISH) can be seen to have certain tasks to do for the total benefit of the patient. And no ISH is emotional, as the Essence CANNOT have or experience emotions such as fear or prejudice. They are all intellectual, and operate on knowledge and facts of the moment. They also know that tomatoes do not cause vomiting, so they are not involved in such associations and the fears resulting from such an unpleasant experience.
So I think we should expand on what these experimental psychologist are saying about the two parts of the mind. Yes, the Essence is automatic, quick, effortless and implicit. It is not associative or emotional. So where do those traits operate?
I would propose that they are traits of the other part of the mind, the Personality. But we have to be aware that there are many levels of conscious awareness of such traits of the Personality. Those we are ashamed of, such as prejudice and fear, are relegated to a very low degree of awareness, which has sometimes been called the "subconscious" or other similar words. I know that my MPD patients who had such feelings knew they had them and were not "unconscious" of them. But they were not about to admit them to me, as they feared my disapproval. So they kept quiet about them, which could lead me to mistakenly think they had no such awareness. But they did, and eventually they told me about them. So some traits are very high on the consciousness/awareness scale (those we can brag about) while others are very low on the same scale. Those of us schooled in Freudian terms might call them suppressed, I think, but the words are not as important as the understanding that they are there, and the person does not want others to know that.
But intuition, as a function of the Essence, is knowledge, not emotions, and it has no basis in experiential learning. You just "know it." And you are not emotional when you know it, as it is above emotions; it is just there.
At the start of the article, there are two examples of persons taking action based on their intuitions. One is considered "good" as it is about a woman who felt there was something wrong about a young man she met when his car broke down. She notified the police, who found his mother dead at home and arrested the son for murder. Fine, that was a good example of intuition which the woman properly paid attention to.
The other example is listed as a "peril" of intuition. This involved a pilot of a passenger plane who followed the intuition of the flight controller whose radar was not functioning at the moment. He hit a cargo plane and 71 people died in the collision. Now, I have talked to Charity, my spiritual mentor, about such plane crashes, and she has assured me that the passengers and crew were all due to die that day, as all their Life Plans were complete for this incarnation. Their Essences all knew that they would "cease to exist" today and had kept their assigned Personalities calmed down, while waiting for the crash to happen. They were all due to go into Thoughtspace, where the CIE would prepare them all for reincarnation. This is the view of the CIE. These Essences were coming "home" to be prepared for their next lifetimes.
From the point of view of the CIE, this was not a tragedy. Of course, from the human point of view, it was a tragedy. So the CIE do not consider this a hazard of intuition. They had set it up that way, so that the crash would occur on schedule, the CIE's schedule. Quite a different point of view.
So I bring this article to your attention. I also appreciate the fact that the Scientific American staff decided to start this magazine a year or so ago. It is also interesting that they say that "Many of the articles in this issue are adapted from articles originally appearing in Gehirn & Geist." I assume that is a German publication, and I have noted many articles written by European psychologists. So the ideas presented are not primarily American products.
Ralph Allison
Since I have written often about how the human Essence is the source of our intuitive knowledge, I was most interested in reading this piece. A quick summary box says this:
"Fast Facts
"Intuition's Double Edge
"1. Cognitive science reveals a two-track human mind, featuring a deliberate, analytical "high road" and an automatic, intuitive "low road."
"2. Through life experience we gain intuitive expertise and we learn associations that surface as intuitive feelings.
"3. As studies of implicit prejudice and misplaced fears illustrate, unchecked gut feelings can lead us astray."
In the text, he quotes psychologist Daniel Kahneman's description of "Track ('System') 1 -- our behind-the-scenes, intuitive mind -- is fast, automatic, effortless, associative, implicit (not available to introspection) and often emotionally charged. Track 2 -- our familiar, conscious (explicit) mind -- is deliberate, sequential and rational, and it requires effort to employ."
Under "Intuition's Powers," he lists blindsight, the ability of persons blind because of damage to their visual cortex to be able to "know" when something enters their blind visual field. I have heard the lectures on this at consciousness conferences, where no one knew how it could be true. But I knew that the Essence of the blind individual is there to provide safety first, so the Essence could tell there was something that might be dangerous in that blind area. The person did not have an visual message as to what it was, just that something was there. This seemed to me to be a logical explanation, that the Essence can see without optic nerves and visual brain cortex, because that is what it does to protect the individual from harm.
Under "Intuition's Perils," he lists "intuitive prejudice" and "intuitive fears." These are emotional reactions which have been learned, often long ago, and trigger an avoidance response. In my thinking, this is NOT as aspect of Essence functioning, but part of the function of the Personality, a.k.a. emotional self or irrational soul. In the case of my now-grown son, when he was a little boy, sick in bed with the flu, he was fed a meal which included ripe whole tomatoes. When he put a tomato in his mouth, he vomited. Thereafter, he was convinced that he was "allergic" to tomatoes and refused to eat them. He could still eat tomato catsup on his hamburgers, however. But, to him, he was allergic to whole tomatoes. Such a reaction is easy enough to understand, as to his emotional Personality, the association between tomatoes and vomiting was a cause and effect relationship, a common mistake in logic.
So here I take issue with the author, for including "associative" and "emotionally charged" as characteristics of Track 1, Intuition. I can see his mistake, since he was not dealing with dissociative people, like I have. In integrated people, the Essence and Personality are closely bonded together, so it is often impossible to know, in laboratory tests, which "part" is doing which tasks. But when they are dissociated, as in MPD/DID, then the Essence (now an ISH) can be seen to have certain tasks to do for the total benefit of the patient. And no ISH is emotional, as the Essence CANNOT have or experience emotions such as fear or prejudice. They are all intellectual, and operate on knowledge and facts of the moment. They also know that tomatoes do not cause vomiting, so they are not involved in such associations and the fears resulting from such an unpleasant experience.
So I think we should expand on what these experimental psychologist are saying about the two parts of the mind. Yes, the Essence is automatic, quick, effortless and implicit. It is not associative or emotional. So where do those traits operate?
I would propose that they are traits of the other part of the mind, the Personality. But we have to be aware that there are many levels of conscious awareness of such traits of the Personality. Those we are ashamed of, such as prejudice and fear, are relegated to a very low degree of awareness, which has sometimes been called the "subconscious" or other similar words. I know that my MPD patients who had such feelings knew they had them and were not "unconscious" of them. But they were not about to admit them to me, as they feared my disapproval. So they kept quiet about them, which could lead me to mistakenly think they had no such awareness. But they did, and eventually they told me about them. So some traits are very high on the consciousness/awareness scale (those we can brag about) while others are very low on the same scale. Those of us schooled in Freudian terms might call them suppressed, I think, but the words are not as important as the understanding that they are there, and the person does not want others to know that.
But intuition, as a function of the Essence, is knowledge, not emotions, and it has no basis in experiential learning. You just "know it." And you are not emotional when you know it, as it is above emotions; it is just there.
At the start of the article, there are two examples of persons taking action based on their intuitions. One is considered "good" as it is about a woman who felt there was something wrong about a young man she met when his car broke down. She notified the police, who found his mother dead at home and arrested the son for murder. Fine, that was a good example of intuition which the woman properly paid attention to.
The other example is listed as a "peril" of intuition. This involved a pilot of a passenger plane who followed the intuition of the flight controller whose radar was not functioning at the moment. He hit a cargo plane and 71 people died in the collision. Now, I have talked to Charity, my spiritual mentor, about such plane crashes, and she has assured me that the passengers and crew were all due to die that day, as all their Life Plans were complete for this incarnation. Their Essences all knew that they would "cease to exist" today and had kept their assigned Personalities calmed down, while waiting for the crash to happen. They were all due to go into Thoughtspace, where the CIE would prepare them all for reincarnation. This is the view of the CIE. These Essences were coming "home" to be prepared for their next lifetimes.
From the point of view of the CIE, this was not a tragedy. Of course, from the human point of view, it was a tragedy. So the CIE do not consider this a hazard of intuition. They had set it up that way, so that the crash would occur on schedule, the CIE's schedule. Quite a different point of view.
So I bring this article to your attention. I also appreciate the fact that the Scientific American staff decided to start this magazine a year or so ago. It is also interesting that they say that "Many of the articles in this issue are adapted from articles originally appearing in Gehirn & Geist." I assume that is a German publication, and I have noted many articles written by European psychologists. So the ideas presented are not primarily American products.
Ralph Allison
Monday, May 28, 2007
Invitation to be on TV
Yesterday I received an invitation to come to NY and be on an educational/entertainment program, live, to talk about MPD/DID. Since this is all under negotiations, I will not identify the show or producer. But why did she contact me and offer to put on a positive view of the subject? She wrote that she "accidentally" came across my website when researching a completely different subject.
After being in this business for a while, I don't believe in accidents anymore. I think Charity steered her to my site, which is something Charity encouraged me to set up. She also steered me to my webmaster, Ernie Hull, who is enthusiastic about the material I have here, so he has been a friend as well as a great webmaster.
Now, who is Charity? If you have read much of what is on this website, you will know that she identified herself as a spirit who comes from another universe, which I call Thoughtspace, and she is a supervisor of us humans, through our Essences. (That is her preferred word for soul or spirit.) She communicated through the body of one of my MPD patients in Santa Cruz, CA, first, then through the body of another MPD patient when I moved to Davis, CA. In 1980, Charity asked me if I would be willing to enter into a contract with her. She wanted me to tell everyone that they had an Essence, and that they should listen to it. That was all. In return, she would teach me whatever I wanted to know about her and her fellow spirits, and how they operated here and in Thoughtspace. (I call "here" Physicalspace.)
I agreed at the time, and she kept her bargain, giving me many lectures, then experiences, then referrals to books she approved of. But I have been having a hard time keeping my end of the bargain. This website is the best I can do, but I have also had the chance to speak of this material in other countries, such as Japan, Mexico, Germany, Italy and England. But getting good exposure of what seems obvious and simple to me is hard, when the material is "spiritual" and I am supposed to be a member of a "scientific" profession -- Medicine & Psychiatry. They don't like to have papers on spirits I can tell you, so it gets hard to be heard on this subject.
That is where Charity has to help me, by steering others, like this interested producer, to my site, and then to me. I do have some ideas on how best to present the material, but she knows what makes good TV. And "talking heads" is not the best idea in TV, you know. We shall see.
Another example of Charity's endeavors in this area happened when my partner, June, and I went to LA for the last ISSD convention. While there she had to visit her favorite cousin, Roger, who is in a health care facility. The day we visited was his 80th birthday, and many of his relatives had decided to come and celebrate with him, in the upstairs socializing area. June and I got there in the afternoon, after the birthday cake had been eaten, but most of her relatives were still there. Since it was late, they were drifting off to drive home, and only a few were left when she brought over to meet me one of the younger cousins. She had felt a strong urge (thank you, Charity!) to introduce him to me, and I found out he is a movie script writer by profession. He gets ideas which he then puts into 30 page proposals which go to the producers he deals with.
Naturally, I was thrilled by the idea that my stuff might be somehow in a movie, and I told him briefly what I had been into. He told me that he wanted to do something new, and MPD had been done with Sybil already, years ago. So, when I got home, I sent him a review of what I had been up to professionally, and he is now researching my stuff, to see if he can make a proposal that will interest those in positions of power in the movie business. Here again, I could not have done this by myself, as I did not know him, and he had to decide to come to LA county to visit his cousin for his birthday, and he lives in the state of Washington. That is a long way to go, but that is the way Charity gets us together.
So, if you are reading this because you somehow ran across my website, sign in and let me know how it happened. I have heard some interesting stories in this vein.
Ralph Allison
After being in this business for a while, I don't believe in accidents anymore. I think Charity steered her to my site, which is something Charity encouraged me to set up. She also steered me to my webmaster, Ernie Hull, who is enthusiastic about the material I have here, so he has been a friend as well as a great webmaster.
Now, who is Charity? If you have read much of what is on this website, you will know that she identified herself as a spirit who comes from another universe, which I call Thoughtspace, and she is a supervisor of us humans, through our Essences. (That is her preferred word for soul or spirit.) She communicated through the body of one of my MPD patients in Santa Cruz, CA, first, then through the body of another MPD patient when I moved to Davis, CA. In 1980, Charity asked me if I would be willing to enter into a contract with her. She wanted me to tell everyone that they had an Essence, and that they should listen to it. That was all. In return, she would teach me whatever I wanted to know about her and her fellow spirits, and how they operated here and in Thoughtspace. (I call "here" Physicalspace.)
I agreed at the time, and she kept her bargain, giving me many lectures, then experiences, then referrals to books she approved of. But I have been having a hard time keeping my end of the bargain. This website is the best I can do, but I have also had the chance to speak of this material in other countries, such as Japan, Mexico, Germany, Italy and England. But getting good exposure of what seems obvious and simple to me is hard, when the material is "spiritual" and I am supposed to be a member of a "scientific" profession -- Medicine & Psychiatry. They don't like to have papers on spirits I can tell you, so it gets hard to be heard on this subject.
That is where Charity has to help me, by steering others, like this interested producer, to my site, and then to me. I do have some ideas on how best to present the material, but she knows what makes good TV. And "talking heads" is not the best idea in TV, you know. We shall see.
Another example of Charity's endeavors in this area happened when my partner, June, and I went to LA for the last ISSD convention. While there she had to visit her favorite cousin, Roger, who is in a health care facility. The day we visited was his 80th birthday, and many of his relatives had decided to come and celebrate with him, in the upstairs socializing area. June and I got there in the afternoon, after the birthday cake had been eaten, but most of her relatives were still there. Since it was late, they were drifting off to drive home, and only a few were left when she brought over to meet me one of the younger cousins. She had felt a strong urge (thank you, Charity!) to introduce him to me, and I found out he is a movie script writer by profession. He gets ideas which he then puts into 30 page proposals which go to the producers he deals with.
Naturally, I was thrilled by the idea that my stuff might be somehow in a movie, and I told him briefly what I had been into. He told me that he wanted to do something new, and MPD had been done with Sybil already, years ago. So, when I got home, I sent him a review of what I had been up to professionally, and he is now researching my stuff, to see if he can make a proposal that will interest those in positions of power in the movie business. Here again, I could not have done this by myself, as I did not know him, and he had to decide to come to LA county to visit his cousin for his birthday, and he lives in the state of Washington. That is a long way to go, but that is the way Charity gets us together.
So, if you are reading this because you somehow ran across my website, sign in and let me know how it happened. I have heard some interesting stories in this vein.
Ralph Allison
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Thoughts of the Day on Spiritual Psychology
Here I plan to write about current events which might be interpreted differently with views taught to me by my spiritual teachers, the CIE. This starts with the recognition that the Essence (a.k.a. soul or spirit) is an active functioning part of every human mind. It is usually totally integrated (a.k.a. alloyed, mixed with) the Personality (a.k.a. ego, irrational soul, emotional self) and we integrated persons are never 100% either way. Some of both is operating at all times we are conscious and relating to the outside world.
I will also feel free to comment on how I think the CIE are manipulating us humans to get us to do whatever they want us to do, whether we like it or not. There are many interesting activities going on around the world these days, and our TV news services are busy keeping us informed on a minute-by-minute basis. We are in a period of our development as a civilization where we need to learn a few new things, but they are mostly very old things which have been cast aside for a few centuries. The ancient shamans knew them well, as knowledge of them was essential to the survival of their tribes. Now we have to learn them again, in this new Age of Communication.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
